cence and suavity on all the features it seems to be illuminating. On the other, you have the small black iris, tipped in the centre with an unquenchable dazzling flame, and throwing on every thing above and below it a lustre of acumen, that Argus might have been proud to rival with all his ubiquity of glances. Such a face as this was never meant to be the index of any common mind. "Nihil inutile, nihil vanum, nihil supervacaneum in Naturâ," as the Prince of English intellect has well expressed it.

My friend Winforms me, that the history of this gentleman has been no less peculiar than is his physiognomy. In his youth he was destined for the Kirk, and proceeded so far in that way as to be dubbed a licentiate, or preacher, which is the nearest approach in the Scottish Church to our deacon's orders. But-from causes, it is probable, of no uncommon nature he soon became disgusted with the idea of the Presbyterian career, and determined to become an Advocate. In those days, however, that was not quite so easy a matter of attainment as it has since come to be. The Advocates at that time were accustomed to exercise a discretionary right, of excluding from their Faculty whomsoever they chose to consider as unfit to enter-not merely on the score of learning or talent, (for, in regard to these, the pretence still lingers)-but, if it so pleased their fancy, on the score of want of birth, or status in society-a notion, the revival of which, if attempted now-a-days, would probably be scouted by a very triumphant majority of their body. What Mr. Forsyth's birth might be, I know not; but so it was, that the admission of the young licentiate, against whose character no one could say one word, was opposed most stiffly in the Faculty meetings, and he did not succeed in his object till after repeated applications had testified the firmness of his purpose, and time had produced its proper effect, in making his opponents ashamed of contradicting it.

He became an Advocate, therefore; and, by degrees, the same inflexible pertinacity of will which had procured his admission into the Faculty, elevated him to a considerable share

of practice. Without making any one appearance that could ever be called splendid, and in the teeth of a great number of men that did make such appearances, Mr. Forsyth was resolved that he should make a fortune at the Bar, and that was enough. From day to day, and from hour to hour, he was at his post. He came to the Court earlier than any one else, and he staid there later. His sagacious countenance was never amissing; and they who saw that countenance perpetually before them, could not fail to read its meaning. Other men laboured by fits and starts, and always with a view to some particular and immediate object of ambition; this man laboured continually, because it was his principle and his belief that he could not be happy without labouring, and because he knew and felt that it was impossible a man of his talents should labour long without being appreciated and rewarded in the end.

If he had no brief, he did not care for that want, or allow himself to take advantage of any pretence for idleness. His strong intellect could no more do without work, than his robust body could subsist without food. If he had not enough to occupy him in the affairs of individual men, he had always the species, and its concerns, on which to exercise his strength. And at a time when nobody suspected him of possessing either ambition or ability for any thing more than the drudgery of his profession, he published a book on the Principles of Moral Science, coarse indeed in many of its conceptions, and coarse in its language, but overflowing everywhere with the marks of most intense observation, and most masculine originality. From this time, the stamp of his intellect was ascertained, and those who had been most accustomed to speak slightingly of him, found themselves compelled to confess his power.

His natural want of high eloquence has prevented him from being the rival of the great lawyers I have described, in their finest field; and a certain impatience of all ornament, has prevented him from rivalling them in writing. Neither, as I am informed, has he ever been able to penetrate into the depths

of legal arguments with the same clear felicity which some of those remarkable men have displayed. But he has been willing to task the vigour of an Herculean understanding to a species of work which these men would have thought themselves entitled to despise, and to slur over, if it did come into their hands, with comparative inattention; and it is thus that his fortune has been made. He cannot do what some of his brethren can do; but whatever he can do, he will do. While they reserve the full exertion of their fine energies for occasions that catch their fancy, and promise opportunity of extraordinary display, he allows his fancy to have nothing to say in the matter; and display is a thing of which he never dreams. He has not the magical sword that will shiver steel, nor the magical shield that will dazzle an advancing foe into blindness; but he is clothed cap-a-pee in harness of proof, and he has his mace always in his hand. He is contented to be ranged with the ordinary class of champions; but they who meet him, feel that his vigour might well entitle him to exchange thrusts with their superiors.

It would surely argue a very strange degree of obstinacy, to deny that all this speaks of an intellect of no ordinary cast. There is no walk of exertion which may not be dignified; and I imagine it is not often that such a walk as that of Mr. Forsyth has found such an intellect as his willing to adorn it.

There are still several of the Scottish Advocates whom I ought to describe to you; but I reserve them, and their peculiarities, for matter of oral communication. My object was, in the mean time, to give you some general notion of those who at present make the most conspicuous figure among an order of men whose name is familiar to you, and celebrated everywhere, but of which very little is, in general, known accurately by such as have not personally visited the scene of their exertions. I suppose I have already said enough to

convince you that the high reputation enjoyed by the Scottish jurisconsults is far from being an unmerited reputation; and that, taking the size and population of the country into view, Scotland has at least as much reason to be proud of her Bar as any country in Europe.

TILL within these few years, it was the custom for the whole of the Judges of whom the Court of Session is composed, to sit together upon the same bench, and Scottish litigants had thus the advantage of submitting their causes to the joint decision of a much greater number of arbiters than those of England ever had to do with. The enormous increase of litigation, however, which resulted from the extended population, and, above all from the extended commerce of Scotland, joined, perhaps, with sufficient experience that this multitude of counsellors brought disadvantages, as well as advantages, along with it, gave rise to a separation of the Civil Court into two divisions, each of which now exercises the full powers formerly vested in the whole body; the Lord President of the Session retaining his place as President of the First, and the Lord Justice-Clerk, (who acts also, as his title denotes, as head of the Criminal Court,) being President of the Second of these Divisions. From all that I can hear, this arrangement has been productive of the happiest effects; an infinitely greater quantity of business being of course discussed, and no business whatever being less thoroughly, or less satisfactorily discussed, than when

each individual case was at once, as the popular phrase ran, "ta'en before the Fifeteen."

The nature of the causes with which these two courts have been chiefly occupied since I began to attend their sittings, has been such, that although I have had great amusement in hearing the particular sides of many questions set forth to the best advantage, by the ingenuity of the particular pleaders, there has been much less to amuse me, a stranger to the technicalities of the Scottish law, in the more concise and more abstruse disquisitions wherein the several Judges have delivered their opinions concerning the legal merits of the arguments employed in my hearing. The external appearance of the Courts, however, is abundantly dignified and impressive; and, without being able to understand most of what was delivered from the Bench, I have heard more than enough to satisfy me that there is no want of talent in the Judges who take the principal direction and conduct of the business brought before them. The President of the Second Division, in particular, seems to be possessed of all the discernment and diligence which it is pleasing to see a Judge display; and he possesses, moreover, all that dignity of presence and demeanour, which is scarcely less necessary, and which is infinitely more rare, in those to whom the high duties of such stations are entrusted. In his other Court, (the Criminal, or Justiciary Court, of which also I have witnessed several sittings,) I could better understand what was going forward, and better appreciate the qualities by which this eminent Judge is universally acknowledged to confer honour upon his function.

In his Division of the Civil Court, one of his most respected assessors is Lord Robertson, son to the great històrian; nor could I see, without a very peculiar interest, the son of such a man occupying and adorning such a situation, in the midst of a people in whose minds his name must be associated with so many feelings of gratitude and admiration. It is perhaps the finest and most precious of all the rewards which a man of virtue and genius receives, from the nation to whose ser